War Metal Wiki talk:Projects
Current Projects Shadowmaru: I am currently revamping the main links. I believe they are coming together nicely (at least the first level, I'm not done going to each individual page and cleaning them up yet.) * Gold Grinding and Rep Grinding need better deck suggestions. :* The main deckbuilding page needs an overhaul. (I want those seven links there) :* I need to edit the deck building navbox more. :** I have updated the deckbuilding navbox to be almost fully dynamic using dpl. There is the matter of adding appropriate sort keys to the various used categories (Ryo has done some already) so that things are listed in the expected order. Also, dpl cache may cause undesirable results for some when related edits are expected to take immediate effect and they don't...However, it does save a lot of manual maintenance that was falling pretty far behind... Slivicon 03:50, November 28, 2011 (UTC) :* If someone is creative they can make the new deckbuilding layout. (Front Page) :* I plan on adding a comment section somewhere on the main page, asking non-editors to post everything on the talk page. Then we can post it to the page by standards with stats if need be. :* Still working through how many decks should be displayed and how many linked. (Making pages for all the decks will take a bit.) :** Some newer contributors are looking for pages that are for a single deck to be deleted (mainly ones where the deck is for a single purpose) and if it is transcluded on one page, opting to put it directly into that page. Decisions will need to be made about when a deck should have its own page and when it should not. Perhaps in the interim, if there are plans for a page that only has a deck to be kept for future transclusion into multiple pages, a noinclude header explaining the purpose/goal would be helpful? Slivicon 03:50, November 28, 2011 (UTC) Garde: Dat War Metal, it's almost like I'm basically re-vamping the entire game by myself ._. Anybody wanna help me with it? *Unfortunately, most editors nowadays are from Kong, who only played Tyrant (like me). But I do have, from Ryo, links to these 2 files: ^_^ **WarMetalUnitsXML - This will showcase all units used in WM, as well as proc chances in floating point, 0.5 is 50% for example. **WarMetalSkillsXML - You'll need to corss-check skill_id tags of individual units with skill_id tags of this file to know which skill has that proc chance, as only this file holds names and stats of the skill. **:Note: What damage tag shows is only middle number, and actual damage is from 50% of specified value to 150% of specified value for all Ryo and I care. **:Hakdo 05:51, December 5, 2011 (UTC) *I've tried to help with technical issues where knowledge of the game isn't required. I don't use Facebook anymore (left a couple years ago for good reason), otherwise I would probably play the game and then would be able to lend a hand. Slivicon 05:02, December 7, 2011 (UTC) New Deck Building Proposal Shadowmaru: I would like to open talks with our new regulars about revamping and updating the deck building section. The mission strategy and achievement sections are getting too big for the bottom template. Several deck ideas are slightly outdated and the deck building section (in general) has a few pages with too many deck templates listed. To start ideas on standardization: I think the wiki has grown enough and has enough templates, statistics and general information that the paragraphs designed for new players is not needed. Skill pages are now updated with graphics and a chart describing abilities and so forth. I think we can delete it. (Basic Strategy/Advanced Strategy) I propose there to be Six (Seven Technically) links on the front page of deck building page: *Faction Pure Decks (edited by Xenon2016) **Imperial Decks **Raider Decks **Bloodthirsty Decks **Xeno Decks **Righteous Decks **Rainbow *PVP **Pure PVP **Dual Faction Decks **Multi-Faction Decks **Spam (can be linked here) *Mission Decks **Mission 10 **Mission 28 **Mission 41 **Mission 66 **Mission 83 **Mission 90 **Imperial Traitors **Bloodthirsty Nest **Xeno Invasion **Homeland Defenders **Halcyon's Elite **Creature Combo **Displaced Raiders **Corrupted Forces **Mutant Bloodthirsty **Bloody Raiders **Vengeful Righteous **Imperial Purists **Night of Terror *Raid Decks **Arctis Vanguard **Xeno Walker **Siege on Kor **Imperial Purger **Enclave Flagship **Oluth **Tartarus Swarm **Behemoth **Miasma **Blightbloom **Gore Typhon *Achievement (Strategy) **Slow Roll **Skill Connoisseur **One-Hit Kill **Deny Support **Annihilator Achievements **Speedy Achievements **Reputation Grinding **Gold Grinding **Common Theme **True Valor **EXTREME Overkill!!! **Against the Odds **Their Time Will Come *Sealed Tournament (Tips) **Sealed Gold **Sealed Enclave **Sealed Gold/Enclave **Sealed Nexus **Sealed Blight **Sealed Blight/Nexus **Sealed Purity Under notes I would like to have a small walkthrough on adding graphics, and step by step instructions on how to add a deck and our Standardization rules. Mission Decks/Strategy: This page is big enough that we can give it its own page. Adding in the ending mission of each map. Achievement Strategy: This page is big enough to warrant its own page. We should write up a deck and strategy for all but the (Use this ability 5x) In Closing: This isn't just tweaking a template or improving the looks of a page, so I would like to open discussion on it. We would need to make it a beautiful front page and split that monster of a template down to each section for this change. I also want to have a "Learn how to" section under notes on the front page of Deck Building. (Uploading graphics, Deck Templates, NavBox's etc) Reply To Deck Building Proposal Honestly, up to now I had pretty much written off the deck building section due to its poor organization. Frankly I think a lot of the existing material is bad advice and/or bad writing and should be axed. I would suggest one navbox for the top-level organization containing links to the main pages for each deck category, and a second navbox for each deck category. Thoughts on specific categories: I would categorize decks based on purpose, not composition--thus, no categories based on playing mono or rainbow, or spamming, as these are means, not ends. In particular this would mean no "Pure Decks" category. The reasoning is that few people think, "I would like to build a mono Imperial deck today," rather, they think, "I would like to build a deck for Mission 89, and it turns out that a mono Imperial spam deck does the best." * PvP ** Defense ** Manual Fight ** Auto Fight ** Manual Surge ** Auto Surge (feasible?) ** Constructed Tournament * Mission Decks ** Organize by mission ** Give gold and reputation grinding missions a more prominent place * Raid Decks ** Organize by raid * Achievement Decks ** Organize by achievement * Sealed Decks ** Organize by tournament type --Evil4Zerggin 15:45, September 30, 2011 (UTC) I agree that that would be a better format. Any ideas for main page layout? (Ya I wrote a ton of that stuff a week before Nexus came out, then we got busy doing that and standardization, then I was on hiatus. It's a dinasour atm) Shadowmaru 16:28, September 30, 2011 (UTC) I think a lot of the work that's been done towards the deck building and related pages seems to be going off on it's own standard with various types of nav boxes, categorization, etc. I'm thinking it could be quite the massive maintenance workload. I'd be interested to get ideas from some of the editoros with lots of technical wiki knowledge as far as things like "dpl", categorization trees, subpages, navboxes, templates, transclusion, etc. If we can get some solid ideas about those options before too much more work is done in this area, it may save a LOT of manual maintenance down the road. I'm thinking about plans along the lines of whatever Hakdo is working towards with the Missions. It appears to me like he is doing a lot of work with templates, specific categorization and use of subpages to be able to take advantage of dynamic pages (dpl) and avoid the biggest problem of any wiki (or web site), STATIC REPETITION of content. The problem with static, repeated content, is when it changes, you have to seek out and find every place it is mentioned and update it. Update it in one place and it is updated everywhere. Same with templates. The beauty is that whatever it is used for, it will look the same everywhere, and when you update it, again, it's in one place. Anyway, I digress... I don't think we all have to be wiki code experts to participate, just need people who "know" to provide help with building blocks and guidelines, then off we go. Slivicon 19:38, November 20, 2011 (UTC) Alternative Idea For Deck Building Proposal *Deck building is already being well taken care of for Missions, Raids and Achievements within their own pages. Remove duplicate efforts in these areas. *The only deck building area that is not taken care of is PvP *So, I recommend abandon the term "deck building" to avoid ambiguity and replace it with simply "PvP" or possibly "Tyrant PvP" as the parent page, giving maximum clarity of purpose (Merge "Table of contents" and "Deck Building", then move it to "Tyrant PvP". *Move the player factions component of "Tyrant Factions" to "Tyrant PvP/Factions" (leave a link behind) *Move "Tyrant Tournaments" to "Tyrant PvP/Tournaments" *"Tyrant PvP/Tournaments/Sealed" *"Tyrant PvP/Tournaments/Sealed/Gold" *"Tyrant PvP/Tournaments/Sealed/Enclave" *"Tyrant PvP/Tournaments/Sealed/Nexus" *"Tyrant PvP/Tournaments/Sealed/Blight" *"Tyrant PvP/Tournaments/Sealed/Purity" *"Tyrant PvP/Tournaments/Sealed/Homeworld" *"Tyrant PvP/Tournaments/Sealed/Mixed" *"Tyrant PvP/Tournaments/Sealed/Mixed/GoldEnclave" *"Tyrant PvP/Tournaments/Sealed/Mixed/NexusBlight" *"Tyrant PvP/Tournaments/Standard" (even though "constructed" is used in game data files, the UI, graphics and much of the Kong forum discussion use the term "standard", stick with that term everywhere to avoid confusion. *Get rid of "deck building" mini navboxes "back to...continue to...", let subpage auto backlinks take care of navigation as well as the main navboxes. *Merge the content from any other "deck building" related pages that might be scattered about into the above, then get rid of the old pages. Slivicon 03:36, December 7, 2011 (UTC) *Also move Tyrant Arena to "Tyrant PvP/Arena" maybe? Everything else I agree, to cut down the necessary amount of housekeeping. Hakdo 04:25, December 7, 2011 (UTC) Deck Building Standardization Ideas My concerns would be surrounding rules/standards being put in place prior to any initiative to make changes, to avoid input from the community going off in different directions and also for editors to be on the same wavelength when it comes to knowing how to edit content. So, I would like to see decisions be made in the following areas: *If strategies are broken into sections/sub-sections, put limits on what is considered a strategy, to keep pages consistent in format, layout and expected content. Rather than having things like "jam strategy", "anti-air strategy", etc. for some raids/missions and not others, make a standard strategy rule/standard, for example: **Auto (use of deck template required; if for a mission, name should start with "Anti-Mission X: deck_name"; if for a raid, name should start with "Anti-Raid_Name: deck_name"; if for widespread use, perhaps it should be it's own page/template and then transcluded wherever it is used. Also, test results using the simulator and test results table I started be required - perhaps the table should be a template) **Manual (use of deck template required; same naming as Auto; simulator test results optional, but not really a big pointer as tests are auto; Priority/Order of card play required, following a standard format - table, bulleted list, whatever, just define it beforehand; Additional strategy notes should be limited to a short paragraph and should not contain personal opinions that are arguable and not include any "statistics" without appropriate "proof". Things like "This deck on manual works for me 100%" simply should not be there; stick to facts, make recommendations, but let readers draw their own conclusions about the capabilities of your deck. *Numbers of decks in a page/section: Limits should be clear and pre-defined, such as perhaps 3 auto decks and 3 manual decks, with links to a related auto page and related manual page for additional decks. If "better" decks are found, the top 3 of each should be on the page and the others bumped down. A limit of something like 5 decks could be placed on the related pages, with the bottom one getting bumped off if better ones appear (domino effect). Determining what is "better" is easy with simulator tests on an auto deck. Determining what is "better" for a manual deck is harder. Different editors will have different ideas of what is "better". If someone could come up with a formula for weighting different factors of a manual deck (cost of cards, wb/gold, difficulty in getting cards, high mission reward/high raid honour reward, etc.), then we could post that as the calculator to use to give a manual deck a weighted score that all editors would accept. I think that's all I can think of for input at the moment, I'll post again if I think of other things. Basically, my main thoughts when it comes to anything on the Wiki as a new editor, is that rules/standards be put in place so that editors have something to reference when making edits. If too much is based on opinion/experience, well, how do new editors like myself know what to do? Slivicon 18:34, September 30, 2011 (UTC) Reply To Deck Building Standardization Ideas A deck building standards page will be made eventually, keep jotting down your thoughts here. Shadowmaru I think there are several issues with the massive deck building area that need agreement: *I do not agree with a Table of Contents page. There is already a main page (Deck Building). The purpose of TOC is served well within Wiki structure by Category lists and built-in TOC functionality within pages, not to mention the many Navboxes. *Speaking of Navboxes, these seem to have gone somewhat out of control. Using dpl is quite effective and as long as the cachedresults param is set to true, should not impact performance. It is very obvious that there is not enough work being done to maintain static navigation, we must embrace dynamic solutions provided by the Wiki app. Also, we need to standardized on nav boxes. The autocollapse footer boxes seem to be functional and non-intrusive - they should be favoured instead of the "Sections" header navboxes (not speaking of built-in TOC) and the "back to" "continue to" ones. Those are, I believe, attempting to introduce a non-standard kind of "web site" flow navigation that doesn't really work well in a Wiki. *The scope of Deck Building needs to be clear to avoid "scope creep". There are areas where it starts overlapping into areas covered by other parts of the Wiki, namely decks for Raids, Missions, Achievements, etc. Deck Building should stick to the items that are not covered by other areas of the Wiki, namely PvP in its various forms (Factions, Tournaments). If it is appropriate with the Deck Building area to mention Raids, Missions or Achievements, let's link or transclude. *I've posted in the Brainstorming forum about category sort keys, so that lists and navboxes that use dpl will sort by desired order, not always just alphabetically. No feedback yet, so I'll probably get started. *We need to standardize on naming for decks in order to help keep them organized, along with categories. Pages named "Super Kill", though creative (not) aren't very helpful. Something like "PvP Decks/Fight/Super Kill" might be preferable, and could also provide the kind of automatic backlinks that those static "back to" navboxes were trying to accomplish. Slivicon 20:44, November 26, 2011 (UTC) Veteran/Newbie Shadowmaru: I think gold/reputation grinding should be at the top of the missions section (or maybe its own category completely with gold grinding at the top?) These are, after all, the most-played missions. One thing I have a hard time getting a handle for as a veteran is how quickly a new player can progress through missions without having the gold and cards from a couple months' grinding and raiding in between each set's missions. I think this gets at another factor besides deck quality. We might consider thinking about two types of players: * The veteran. These consist of the more dedicated and experienced players who aren't independently wealthy in real life. We can assume they own one copy of Dracorex and probably Yurich, but no other WB cards. They probably have a few copies of all Standard and Enclave rare cards, all free Reward cards, several copies of the best gold-buyable Reward cards and tournament cards, and can afford to spend a several thousand gold if the situation warrants it. So even here there are limits--no Grim Spectre or 10x Cycle Mech even if, for some reason, the mission is best played with them. * The newbie. This player unlocked the mission/raid/tournament, etc. in question without much chance to grind or raid in between. You can probably expect a decent supply of Standard commons and uncommons, and maybe one of each rare and reputation reward on the way there. Recommendations will probably involve a lot of free reward cards, Irradiated Infantry, and Trident (which solve a lot of problems at least decently well anyhow), or perhaps to come back later. Reply To Veteran/Newbie I tried to do beginner and advanced categories like your veteran and newbie it didn't really work. I think we should make the main decks "common" the link any decks like spam Reapers/Pummeller/Sharpshooter etc. Gold edition and Enclave spam is ok. I think plenty of people have bought those. (They can sub something if they dont have 10 vampires.) We don't actually need a 99% effective deck. Just something that works. (unsigned) The closest thing I've come to keeping that Veteran/Newbie trend is in pvp. Promos and all reward cards can be used no worries. That can be defined in the Standards section as well. (We just don't need five pages of it.) Shadowmaru 01:49, October 1, 2011 (UTC) Sorry, I didn't mean putting them in different categories--I meant just as an idea towards how many decks we should include for each mission/raid. Basically I think it's better to have two high-end decks and one cheap deck or so than all high-end decks. --Evil4Zerggin 01:59, October 1, 2011 (UTC) Mission Tables Someone edited one of the mission tables to put in values for grinding ratios. I had read up on wiki editing and learned about the calculation capabilities of "expr". So, I had started updating the mission tables on the missions page with expressions to calculate the grinding ratios. Now that I've seen the gold grinding page, this should save having to repeat the information on that page; perhaps reciprocal links would suffice. Slivicon 22:33, September 30, 2011 (UTC) Reply To Mission Tables Thanks for putting it in the comment section! Shadowmaru 01:49, October 1, 2011 (UTC) Official Editing and Templates Guidelines Page It seems standards for editing and such are being established, and that is great; however, most of these things occur in the forums or talk pages or the like, which more casual users are not likely to see (not to mention they might be confusing at first). As such, I believe a page detailing editing standards and common templates, featured in a moderately prominent location, would be a helpful guide to contributors. Does anyone else think this a good idea? Anakin2177 18:44, November 9, 2011 (UTC) Agreed, for what it's worth. Slivicon 21:55, November 9, 2011 (UTC) Probably. I'm fairly sure I can handle Tyrant card pages and War Metal units (although Hakdo will likely have to contribute his newer templates) but I don't know so much about the other pages. I'm thinking a main page with subpages. Could put it on one page, but there'd be a fair amount of content.--Ryo Sangnoir 22:12, November 9, 2011 (UTC) Okay, here's a quick draft of what the section could possibly look like: *'Editing Guidelines' (Brief, general things like grammar, tips, etc. and links to subsections) **'Image Nomenclature' ***Hakdo:Speaking of which, we already have the nomenclature for Tyrant card images, but not for images extracted from WarMetal. Before doing this standardization discussion, our fellow contributors are just uploading in a point-and-click basis, that is, once they extracted a pic, they upload the pic AS IS, with the oddly-made pic names untouched. (For example, "venomousdragon.jpg"=Rifter, "rightbiggymech.jpg"=Apollo) With this edit, I think we should face this immediately on WarMetal image nomenclature. What I can think of right now: ****Images for WarMetal units must be named in WM''unitname''.jpg, or unitname''WM.jpg Hakdo 02:35, November 10, 2011 (UTC) *****Tyrant images are T''unitname, right? WM''unitname'' would make sense. Anakin2177 22:33, November 10, 2011 (UTC) ****There have been suggestions about the new card Hades which appears with two different forms of artwork, and what to name files in that context. Currently the exclusive artwork form was uploaded as THades.jpg and after the Halloween promo, I uploaded the non-exclusive artwork form that then became available as THades_519.jpg (adding an underscore and the card ID number from cards.xml. A decision should be made before more cards like this start appearing. Slivicon 02:46, November 10, 2011 (UTC) **'Card/Deck Pages' **'Templates' ***I would recommend that a good start would simply be that people who create/modify templates also create/modify the template documentation that goes with each template, rather than just creating/modifying the templates and assuming everyone can read minds or interpret their markup and what their intentions were/are Slivicon 00:16, November 11, 2011 (UTC) **'Deck Building/Submission' (and templates) **A site-mapish explanation of the current organizational structure - where any new pages should go and such ***Related to organizational structure, a discussion on the state of categories Slivicon 02:50, November 10, 2011 (UTC) I think that would be a reasonable "Editing Help/Standards" mini-section. Anakin2177 23:07, November 9, 2011 (UTC) Refiner's input: Regarding naming standard on War Metal images: : I have attempted to keep screenshots namd consistenly, but all units, boses, tokens and other standard game images are exactly as the developers have them on their server. I did modify the categorization of the War Metal side when the Tyrant image categorization became standardized. Obsolete cards: : Cards other than Hades have obsolete forms as well. These were kept in a png format and displayed on the Card's page with an explanation. Templates: : I agree with you on the documentation, Slivicon. I tried to put documentation on templates containing input values and meant to go back to pick up all the others I created way back before everyone joined in the wiki expansion. Many of my originals are long since edited to the point that I hardly recognize them. Some I threw together just to organize the content. I am pleased to see that many have been revised the way I had intended them to work. I will attempt to sort out some documentation on the templates when I have time. I look forward to the many upcoming changes as the wiki continues to evolve. Refiner 04:22, November 27, 2011 (UTC) Standard Nomenclature I think it would be good to have standards on naming and terminology. As usual, I can really only speak for Tyrant, but there are several terms that refer to the same thing in the game community which is normal and expected. I think it would make the Wiki more readable, though, if we took into account the various terms that are used but standardized on one term for each "situation". We could also standardize on linking, spelling, and formatting for these terms. If this is an accepted idea, would it be possible to create bots to perform these tasks for us? I'll start with some example ideas: *PvP **Meaning: Player versus Player **May appear as: "PVP", "Player Versus Player", "pvp" **Replace all occurrences with: PvP **Replace first occurrence on a page with: PvP *Faction Deck **Meaning: A deck where all cards belong to a single Faction **May appear as: "Pure Deck", "Mono Deck" **Replace all occurrences with: Faction Deck *Acronyms/Abbreviations to expand (good bot material?): **BT = Bloodthirsty **II = Irradiated Infantry **EMP = Electromagnetic Pulse Anyway, I think you all get the idea... Slivicon 19:52, November 20, 2011 (UTC) Regular Maintenance Here are items that I try to keep an eye on, anyone interested can help as well: *The old Deck template is obsolete, there are newer decks now such as PlayerDeck and MissionDeck. There is a link to see what pages need the old Deck templates updated to PlayerDeck or other newer deck template: Pages that link to "Template:Deck" *Redirects that need fixing: *Pages that don't link to anything and could use a link back to their main topic or something appropriate *Orphaned pages: Pages that are not linked to or transcluded anywhere (may be works in progress, may need to be removed, may need to be linked to from somewhere appropriate) *See many more at I would like to ask that the various Admins also please start working on Category:Candidates for deletion by either deleting items within or removing the delete and stating why the item is to be kept in the edit summary so that it is logged in history. There is a lot of junk in there that has been there for quite a long time. If help is needed, I would help if I was able to do so. Slivicon 21:12, November 26, 2011 (UTC) I was noticing several pages coming up in the deletion category lately. With all the real life things I've been bogged down with maintenance here. I've been cleaning up some of the War Metal side (lonely, uncategorized), but could use some help with the Tyrant side of things. Refiner 03:49, November 27, 2011 (UTC) Tabbed Pages I'm curious if anyone has already explored tab functionality as a possible way to make very long pages with many sections more user-friendly. The following are apparently installed and available here: *Tabber *Tabview Slivicon 17:45, November 28, 2011 (UTC) Blogs, Forums And Community Portal I'd like to propose that we find ways to encourage the use of the blogs, forums and also point newcomers to War_Metal_Wiki:Community_Portal if it isn't being done already (update the page if necessary). There's already been some effort to "de-personalize" wiki article pages and encouraging people to use Talk pages for publishing opinions, comments and personal views/experiences. This is good, but sometimes even a Talk page can lose objectivity. Blogs are here and are, in my opinion, a great platform for people to post their personal views and experiences about both games, including posting Tyrant decks, opinions on developments in the game, etc. I think it would help curb the maintenance cost for the Wiki as a whole if people were encouraged to use their blogs as a starting point for many contributions of new content. If the content is relevant to a current project within the Wiki, the blog writer can be encouraged to post the information to the relevant area of the Wiki and perhaps be given guidance (if necessary) on how to best integrate the new content. If the content is not relevant to a project within the Wiki, then the content is not lost, nor is it yet another page requiring "fixing" in some way; it is a personal blog post and it can remain as such. Similarly, forums don't seem to get used very much. I recently noticed that some of the newer forums were being created without the required Forumheader template which is required for each new forum (according to the help guide). This auto-includes a header template at the top of new posts within the forum so that they get included in the bread crumb trail. Perhaps this discouraged some people from using it, perhaps not. I have noticed that many forum posts seem to fade away without response. Other posts have some information in the topic and other information spread out in various talk pages. I wonder if we are losing out on the efforts of people who have posted to the forums as well as the people who have posted to talk pages by not simply picking one of the two environments and retiring the other. I don't mean to imply that forums should go away, but if a forum, or a forum topic starts showing signs of "shared" or "duplicated" discussion between a forum and one or more talk pages, that we either actively post reciprocal links between all the connected discussions or centralize the content to one spot, with links in all the source locations saying "this discussion has been moved to insert_link_here". There have been many comments to the effect that people are/were unaware of various "standards", projects or goals. I've created a new policy proposal template that acts as a message box to place at the top of pages which can be written as proposed policies, guidelines, processes or standards for contributing to the Wiki. I plan to write some initial proposals myself now that I am an Administrator that I hope the other Admins and regular editors will review and discuss towards a goal of promoting accepted proposals as policy. The content of these initial proposals I plan to write based on what I've seen happening during my time here (i.e. noticed undocumented "standard practices"), as well as items I believe will help reduce confusion, overlapping projects and even conflict of interest. Slivicon 19:14, December 2, 2011 (UTC) Tyrant Raids Architecture ''This section has been moved here. Exp Grinding I've noticed that there arent any pages for grinding exp which is important if you want Realm Traverser or Solar Powerhouse so i propose that we make one. (Xenon2016) *Only seems to be one page in the cat atm Category:Tyrant Grinding Experience Slivicon 22:10, December 12, 2011 (UTC)